I was talking to a guy a couple of weeks ago about the evolution of programming languages. I mentioned to him about what a huge change there was between Microsoft C Compiler version 5.0 and 6.0. He was like..."you mean from Visual Studio 5 to 6?" and I was like "how long have you been out of short trousers??"
Ok...I get that a lot these days. Everyone is younger than me.
Microsoft introduced the capability to work with Windows in the Microsoft C/C++ Compiler version 6.0. It was so incredibly complicated to launch a window that it really didn't seem at all worth learning how the hell to do it. If my memory does not fail me entirely, they introduced Visual Studio after the C/C++ Compiler version 7.0. Visual programming was something of a revelation...
But that's another day's story. I'm not fundamentally anti-Microsoft. I think they've made a few really good products. I just think it's a shame that they're so inconsistant in everything they do.
I use MS Word all the time. I used to use a couple of DTP packages to prepare docs to be able to get the layout flexibility I wanted, but now I can actually do pretty much all I need to within Word. I tried using OpenOffice and it is a total train-wreck by comparison.
I also use MS Excel all the time. It is an extremely powerful tool without which we would have a hard time running the business. That's no exaggeration, because we use it for so many different things. I tried importing a few of my general purpose spreadsheets into OpenOffice...it cried its little eyes out...it willingly donned the gimp suit and stuffed a little red ping pong ball into its mouth and offered me some ripe pink rump...it failed...
I had a run down on KeyNote on the Mac the other day. I liked it. I liked the feel of it, and I really liked that the presentations did not automatically look like PowerPoint...I use PowerPoint quite a bit but I never really like the end result much.
It made me think about the MS Office packages. I can now draw a box on the screen in just about any of the MS Office component packages. There are also a couple of packages that are specifically written to help me draw a box on the screen (Visio, PowerPoint, Publisher...I think they canned the other one...Photoshare? something like that...not counting that total waste of space MS Paint...). Every single one of them works a different way! Why can't they just write a drawing/painting plugin and let all the apps use the same interface?
They must spend so much money having separate development teams maintaining all those different products, as if we (the user) gave a damn!
Ah...I could not pass an opportunistic moment without commenting on MS Office. We loves it and hates it we do. My precious. *Cough*. Enough of that.
ReplyDeleteI (much the same as you probably) have a love hate relationship with it. My work MS office use tends to be emails and Outlook/Exchange integration with 'other' things. My Word/Excel/PP/Visio/Project use is limited - no fancy Doc/PPs/XLS stuff for my job.
I do know what you mean about OO though. I was trying to SUM time in Calc from a xls import and it wrecked my head. Turns out I needed to prefix the expressions with ^. or some similar mad term. I forget now exactly, but OO took hours to do a time based list that Excel could do by default.
I'm still running MS Office 2003 at work. One simple reason - Lookout for Outlook. MS bought them out and re-used (stole) their search coding and made the 'lovely' search in Outlook 2007. I tried it and re-installed 2003 within hours. Maybe Office 2010 has improved things but as it stands 2003 with the 2007 office converter still works for me! Course there's always the MS licensing issues that every new release brings....
PS There's a GIMP in Linux but he's a cute animal fella without a black suit....
Office 2010 is actually...pretty good. Search on the older versions of Outlook was terrible. I'm still running 2003 on my other laptop. I tried a search plugin that made things a little better (can't remember which one it was) but not great, then switched to Xobni and that works well so long as you've got something meaty enough to bear the overhead.
ReplyDeleteI tried one of my big Excel sheets on OO running on a tiny Atom based notebook...it hung...and I got bored and closed it down. Then I tried it again and let it take its time while I made tea. Half hour later it had loaded but with errors and none of the formulas worked...
It's not just about all the functions OO doesn't support, the thing just works badly and un-intuitively.
Just going through the whole MS licensing trauma now trying to set up the new office. So let me try to understand this Mr Gates, I give you a pile of money and I get what...? A flexible licensing model... yeah, well if it's that flexible you won't mind me sticking it up your butt!
It would be nice if I could talk to two consecutive Microsoft partners who explain the model the same way. I just know that they don't know how the fuck it works either, they just want my money.
But regardless about all the bad stuff, I do love MS Word and Excel.
My least favourite thing about Excel is that I can't have two Excel windows open on two separate monitors. WHY NOT!!!??? That's exactly what I always want to do!
Talking about software that isn's Microsoft, I've been trying SmartDraw for a while as an alternative to Visio.
ReplyDeleteI like that there are some quite cool built-in libraries of symbols (traffic accidents and SWAT tactical planning symbols...I use those all the time around the office).
I like the export function that will insert the drawing I'm working on into whatever other application I have focused. That's great when I'm working on a big proposal, I just flip into SmartDraw, throw together a sketch, export, flip back to Word and there it is. No "save as"/"insert-picture" followed by the "where the hell did I save the damned picture" nonsense. I like that.
Everything else I don't like.
The symbols are way more "cartoon-ish" than Visio. All the symbols are the opposite way around to Visio - so if you mix Visio and SmartDraw pictures in the same doc they look terrible next to each other.
You can't "flip-horizontal" a symbol/shape...
The connector tool is really annoying.
The anchor points on symbols are way too sticky.
...but I'm still using it a little because of the SWAT symbols...
MS licensing is a minefield alright. We have a Gold Partner agreement but even that is vague with one person saying we have x amount of licenses and another saying no no it's y....
ReplyDeleteI'm a bit of a Linux fan (as you know - I only use Windows at home if I have to) and have found some really good Linux apps that can do things instead/better than Windows. PDF edit, sat encoded .TS file player or WiFi analyser etc. I even prefer the file manager Nautilus over Explorer. Trouble is they're either incredibly hard to find due to the stupid crazy world of naming in Linux (think GIMP..) or CLI only or both CLI and a pain to actually work out how to use (think mplayer cmd line options or ffmpeg..)